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Why is Microsoft's COM header file named as Unknwn.h, instead of Unknown.h? Is it misprint, or are there objective reasons for such naming?

Rob Kennedy
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Andrey Bushman
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    @PaulManta According to the tags, I would say COM. – Etienne de Martel Nov 02 '12 at 18:20
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    Some employers ban the use of the letter `o`. In some cases it's to avoid confusion with the Arabic numeral for "five", and in others it may be for ethical or religious reasons. – Kerrek SB Nov 02 '12 at 18:20
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    @KerrekSB: surely you must be joking. – orlp Nov 02 '12 at 18:21
  • @nightcracker If anything to avoid confusion between o and 0. But this question is ridiculous. – Florin Stingaciu Nov 02 '12 at 18:21
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    was it originally written to be compatible with some odd/old filesystem? – justin Nov 02 '12 at 18:24
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    I think it's an interesting question, and I would like to know why. I voted to reopen. – Etienne de Martel Nov 02 '12 at 18:25
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    @EtiennedeMartel i'm also curious. people who have been programming decades longer than i remember such historical facts. (so did i) – justin Nov 02 '12 at 18:28
  • @Etienne de Martel Is the answer for this question is interesting to nobody? :) – Andrey Bushman Nov 02 '12 at 18:33
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    @Bush: The question _is_ interesting. Unfortunately, it was a bad question because it's poorly worded and impossible to answer. – Mooing Duck Nov 02 '12 at 18:37
  • @Florin Stingaciu It is unconvincing. Then why the other header has a name 'iostream' instead of 'istream'? – Andrey Bushman Nov 02 '12 at 18:37
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    @Bush There are two headers: `istream` _and_ `iostream`. – Etienne de Martel Nov 02 '12 at 18:40
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    Hey guys, this not just some unknow header, this is **the** unknown interface, so it **needs** to have some kind of individidual name, so why not remove the `o`, removing the `u` whould have been worth. – alk Nov 02 '12 at 19:06
  • Wording can be fixed, @Mooing, as you demonstrated. What makes you think it's impossible to answer? Why did you vote to close the question after you voted to re-open it? – Rob Kennedy Nov 02 '12 at 19:37
  • @alk: probably I would have chosen "IUnknown.h". Unambiguous, has the same name of the interface and also complies to 8.3 restrictions. – Matteo Italia Nov 02 '12 at 19:38
  • @RobKennedy: I voted to open because I saw it was closed as not constructive, and thought "it _is_ constructive". Then after it was open, I eventually realized this is "too localized", and voted to close again. :( – Mooing Duck Nov 02 '12 at 19:40
  • Author implies that we know the answer - **U** n **k** n **w** n --> U know Why... `n`s are padding the brotherhood uses to convey cryptic message like this. There's also a movie coming up - `U know why...Britney did it again?` nuff said about the legacy of this header – Ramadheer Singh Nov 02 '12 at 19:49
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    Probably like that to avoid conflict with an existing Unknown.h header (a big file at Microsoft :) – Graham Perks Nov 02 '12 at 20:22
  • @GrahamPerks: Do you work for Microsoft? Or do you have a citation for that? – Adam Rosenfield Nov 02 '12 at 20:24
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    Six letter filenames go back a long, long way: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEC_Radix-50 – Hans Passant Nov 02 '12 at 20:38
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    I'm just guessing on a conflict with an existing unknown.h header. Sorry I wasn't clear on that. – Graham Perks Nov 02 '12 at 20:47
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    Short of someone from the language team coming and answering this question, I don't see how it could ever be answered definitively. And let's say they did, *Does it matter why?* Is this a specific programming problem you face? It would seem to be a trivia-esque question, and those aren't a good fit for Stack Overflow. Perhaps you'd be better off Emailing [Raymond Chen](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing)? – George Stocker Nov 02 '12 at 21:51
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    [Meta discussion about this question](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/153440/is-an-unlikely-to-be-answered-question-the-same-as-an-unanswerable-question). Please do not delete this question while it is being discussed on meta! – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Nov 02 '12 at 22:19

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